[lubuntu-devel] [Lubuntu 17.04 Discussion] LXQt

[Simon Quigley]

Hello Julien,

> Yes the plan was to have an image, so at least we can compare LXQt
> image with the LXDE image. I think it's the very minim before even
> thinking of switching.

Of course, that was my thought as well. :)

> Finally, we will be able to apply some custom settings ... That's also
> a need item. Thanks for this.

Actually, you should be thanking Palo Kisa and Dmitry Shachnev for
getting this good to go. ;)

> I'm sure Debian LXQt team will also have a look at the build test with
> Qt 5.7.1. That's should be harmless.

I think so too. We'll be able to sync down whatever they might fix, and
maybe we can contribute something ourselves. Who knows? ;)

> As I noted on the bug report, it needs libqtxdg sync before everything
> else. Do you build test it on zesty ?
> Like libqtxdg, they need to be build test before (like in a zesty
> pbuilder). If you want to speed up the process, you can do this test.

Not yet, I'll get back to you when I do. Apologies, life has been crazy
lately.

> I'm more for the option 2 : Get the most TODO items on the list, so we
> get an image to compare. Remember that it needs to be as good as the
> LXDE version to be candidate for the switch. That mean we have to look
> at the performance, features, usability ... versus the cost of the
> switch (all the documentation, tutorial on the web, the habit of the
> users will have to change ...).

I definitely think this is a good thing to think about. Of course there
will be workflow changes for the end user, but we need to make sure that
all the software is fully functional, working, and as good as Lubuntu as
it is now. I considered that as part of the QA team's testing, but of
course we need to keep this in mind.

> I'm not worry about the stability of LXQt. The 0.11 version should be
> OK. However, I'm more worried about the others packages that we have
> to add to make a full distribution. That's why it's important to get
> an image, to see the gap between the LXDE version, and the LXQt
> version.
> 
> To be honest, I'm not very confident with this switch anymore. Years
> ago, I was a great fan of the LXQt initiative. But with some time, we
> see the similar problems (release cycle, getting all the desktop
> features, translation system ...), and the Qt-5-only ecosystem is not
> very big. Also, one of the reason to replace LXDE was that it's
> unmaintained, but that's not entirely true (there are still recent
> commits on upstream git). So for now, I'm very undecided. I really
> wait for the image testing result to see the among of work we have to
> put to make it a real distribution.

I agree. The image will really let us test and play around with this,
and pick out any problems we might have. If the amount of work to get it
usable is doable, I'm all for continuing and fixing the problems.

After all, we would be one of the first distributions to switch to LXQt
as our main desktop environment, and as shown with the Qt issue we got
fixed, there will be some general issues associated with that. That's to
be expected, I think. But as long as there are just minor annoyances to
fix, I am all for it, and I am willing to help solve these problems.

I also think one of the problems (possibly, I could be wrong here) is
that this was put off for *so* *long* and therefore we didn't get a
chance to work through these issues. But as long as we can work together
and tackle what needs to be tackled, I think we're golden.

As for the lack of packages, I think we can find some working packages,
and submit patches when we want to add functionality and fix bugs. Of
course there's not as many packages, but it's something. ;)

> Finally, there is also an option possible : the split. As we may
> consider that the LXQt version is not good enough to replace the LXDE
> version, or that the LXDE version is still good to go), that doesn't
> mean this version doesn't deserve to exist on its own.

I definitely think we can bring this up for discussion when we have the
LXQt image ready. We're supporting LXQt, but does that really mean we
have to move to it?

Just a thought, let's see how it goes.

> So, to conclude, I think we have to do the TODO list Simon described,
> as far as we can, and let discuss it again with 2 images ready to run.

Sounds good to me! ;)

-- 
Simon Quigley
tsimonq2 at lubuntu.me
tsimonq2 on freenode and OFTC
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